Spotted Soup!

Something a little different! Spotted soup!

This isn't really a recipe as such, more a way to "supercharge" an old favourite.
Adding black rice to pumpkin soup not only increases the fibre and nutrient profile of the soup, it also makes it visually, ummmm, interesting. Kids love it!

Black rice is also down as Forbidden Rice, as it was reserved only for royalty in ancient China. It can be a little tricky to hunt down. It hasn't made its way into supermarkets yet, but can be found in health food and specialty food stores. But it's worth the effort! Black rice contains higher amounts of protein, iron and fibre than brown rice, and due to its dark pigment, the highest amounts of antioxidants of all varieties of rice.

And if you cook your black rice and then refrigerate it overnight, you will yield even greater nutrition benefits! That's because when you cook and then cool "carby" foods like rice, potatoes and legumes, a portion of the starches within them undergo a process called "Retrogradation", and they are converted to Resistant Starch. This Resistant Starch is undigestible in the small intestine. And what that means for you is that carbs that have been cooked and then refrigerated for 12-24 hours will have a lower glycemic and insulin response in the body - great news for anyone who loves carbs but needs to keep their blood sugar in check! But the news gets better.... That Resistant Starch also becomes food for your healthy inner bacteria! Read my Blog Post about it here and watch the excellent video by the CSIRO that explains it all!

Ingredients

• Pumpkin soup. Check out my recipe for Lazy Pumpkin Soup here!
• Black rice, cooked (and refrigerated overnight if you want to reduce the glycemic impact!)

Method

Stir black rice into pumpkin soup before serving.

Enjoy!

Note: if you plan on having leftovers (never seems to happen in my house!) then I recommend keeping your black rice separate and only stirring in before serving. This is because the dark pigment from the black rice will leach out into the soup, which will end up a rather unappetising shade of brown the next day!